Renovation.
I’m couch surfing for a few days in Armenia (Armenia the town in Colombia that is, not the country in Eurasia).
My host, Jair, is renovating. He’s transforming what was formerly a family holiday Villa into a backpacker hostel.
The Villa is on the outskirts of Armenia, surrounded by banana plantations and the creeping encroachment of suburban development.
Toilet Shopping.
Me and Jair and Karla go to the market to get fruit and veg.
Karla is in charge of the guest house re-design. She has some really cool ideas like putting a tree house in the garden with hammocks.
The market is super cheap and the fruit is really fresh and delicious looking.
The herb stall has some nice healthy looking pot plants for sale too.
Exotic fruits aren’t the only cool things you can get at the market in Armenia. There are shops selling everything imaginable from laundry soap to cement mixers.
Jair and Karla need a toilet to install in one of the new dormitories of the hostel. We go to this little second-hand shop where the guy is selling all kinds of weird stuff like brass crucifixes, record players, kerosene lamps and used plumbing stuff.
Jair chooses a nice sturdy looking toilet bowl and cistern set, proudly stamped with the legend: ‘American Standard’.
We load the toilet into the boot of his sports car. Jair pays the shop guy, but as we’re about to leave he notices an old seventies style film projector. The shop guy dusts it off and sets it up. He rummages around and finds a reel of sixteen millimetre film labelled ‘Lassie’. After a bit of experimental prodding with a screwdriver and some Spanish cursing the projector flickers and whirrs and a blurry sepia toned dog appears on the wall of the shop. As well as Lassie rescuing a goose from certain death, the film reveals clips of stern looking clergymen walking like penguins in Vatican City and some footage of long forgotten bearded politicians haranguing a crowd.
Jair asks the shop guy how much he wants for the projector. Jair loves retro stuff, and he wants to use the projector as part of the decor at the hostel. Karla doesn’t seem too impressed by the idea, but I can see the lust in Jair’s eyes. He just has to have the projector. After a lot of haggling he settles on a price for the projector and the film. We load them into the car beside the toilet bowl and the fruit and head back to the hostel.
Rajo the Hungry Dog.
Do you like coffee and cake?
Me too.
The pictures above and below are from Buenavista. It’s a little town surrounded by coffee plantations in the hills near Armenia.
You and me and Jair have a lot in common it turns out. As well as being a fan of retro audio-visual equipment, Jair is very keen on coffee and cake.
Buenavista is where some of Colombia’s best coffee comes from. We walked around the town together with Jair’s dog, Rajo, and did some perfunctory sight seeing, but then we got down to business and found a cafe with a nice view. Coffee and cake is dangerously inexpensive in Colombia. I had a really good fruit cake and a chocolate slice. Jair went for a donut looking thing with a Spanish name I can’t pronounce or remember.
There’s a kid sitting at the next table with his mum who is enjoying his cream bun even more than we are enjoying our cakes. He drops a big blob of cream on his shirt and when he puts his cake down to clean himself up, Rajo sidles up, with puppy eyes, and starts nibbling on it. Jair grabs Rajo’s collar and drags him away, apologising to the kid and his mum. The kid doesn’t look too upset. He makes a shrug of resignation, pats Rajo on the head and stuffs the rest of the bun into his mouth.
Jair gives Rajo a good telling-off. He behaves himself for about five minutes, but as soon as we stop watching him he disappears into the kitchen and starts going through the bin. The kitchen staff aren’t too worried either. Buenavista is a pretty relaxed town.
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A Big Pussy.
Jair wants to build a new verandah on the front of the hostel. I tell him that I have some carpentry experience and offer to help. We draw up a rough plan on the wall with sharpies.
There is plenty of recycled timber around the place. Jair’s builder, Havier, has already put a pair of sturdy posts in the ground, so all we need is a couple of bearers and some solid joists.
We collect bolts, screws and nails from the market district. Jair has never done any carpentry so I help him choose a few basic hand tools and show him how to use them.
The verandah posts are a bit too tall. I mark the top of the posts where they need to be trimmed, but the handsaw we bought isn’t really up to the job of cutting the massive hardwood posts.
Jair says that Havier, the builder, has an electric saw we can use. He gets it and shows it to me. It isn’t so much a saw as an angle grinder with a saw blade mounted on it. The blade is studded with wicked looking teeth, and there is no safety guard. To my Australian eyes it looks frighteningly hazardous.
“This doesn’t look safe to me” I tell Jair. “This tool would be illegal in Australia.”
Havier assures us his hybrid grinder-saw is fine, and clambers up onto the wobbly scaffolding to make the cuts himself.
Everything goes alright for the first cut. I watch Havier from a safe distance, as he weilds the grinder at head height, the screaming blade tearing through the wood and sending chips and sawdust flying.
I feel like a big pussy. This little guy is about half my height and weight, but he isn’t scared to use the franken-saw.
Half way through cutting the second post, the blade suddenly sticks in the cut and the tool flies out of Havier’s hands and goes screaming through the air.
Jair and me both leap back and cover our heads involuntarily. The saw misses Haviers left arm by a mere inch or two and lands on the deck of the scaffolding, where the blade slashes into the planking, throwing a shower of splinters into the air.
When Jair and me straighten up, we see Havier grimacing and clutching at his arm.
“Did he cut himself?” Jair gasps.
“No. If that thing cut him his arm would be on the ground” I reply.
Havier is very lucky. The force of the grinder tearing out of his grasp just twisted his wrist. No blood.
“So I think I know why this tool is illegal in Australia now” Jair comments.
I nod. “I think we should finish this job with a hammer and chisel.”
